To go with the powerful images that Dispatch readers from around the world have sent in, here are what some op-eds and blog posts are saying about what today's 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights means.
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter makes an appeal for the new American administration to leverage the full weight of the United States' "moral footprint" to support and protect freedom and democracy in places like Egypt, Pakistan, and DR Congo. (On the same WaPo pages, Michael Gerson shares my irritation at the EU's sidestepping of peacekeeping responsibilities in the latter country.)
Marc Ambinder on pre-emption preclusion of "the greatest existential threats" -- weapons of mass destruction, but also, as he hypothesizes that the Obama administration might contend, the interconnected danger posed by failed states:
But that also means: if suddenly, somewhere, a vulnerable population is being slaughtered, the United Nations, or the United States, or NATO, shouldn't dither; they should intervene to stop it. The UN -- and the US -- have no moral authority to compete in this marketplace if they step away from these challenges and then demand that failing states acquiesce to various international regimes and protocols.Of course, the intervention -- if it is truly to be pre-emptive -- in the case of mass atrocities must occur before the slaughter begins. Even in a case like Rwanda, which exploded "suddenly," leaving the international community in paralysis and setting off a relentless pace of killings, the signs of something dangerous -- and destabilizing, to look at the situation in eastern DR Congo right now -- were evident for a long time. But Ambinder is right; the prerogative to demand failing states' compliance to international protocols must be accompanied by an actual willingness to engage the problems at hand. Moreover, it also requires that the states doing the demanding -- Member States of the UN all -- must themselves meet international protocols. This leads to a moral -- and practical -- obligation for the United States in particular to sign on to and fully adhere to these internaional agreements, which include not only big obvious ones like the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, but also lower-hanging fruit like the ban on cluster munitions. Interestingly, one such international compact -- one that has been formally adopted by all UN Member States -- exists that could provide exactly the framework for preemption and prevention that Ambinder is seeking: the Responsibility to Protect. And if Obama's pick for UN ambassador is any indication, the United States may be throwing more of its support behind this high-potential strategy in the near future.
Dayo Olopade at The Plank picks up Susan Rice's 2007 post for Dispatch, and juxtaposes her outlook toward the crucial interconnectedness of poverty, disease, and conflict with the condescending skepticism of Heritage Senior Fellow Peter Brookes.
Now, the UN is good at lots of things, like handing out food and giving kids shots. [Laughter] You know, I'm not one to denigrate those things. What--they eradicated what, yellow fever in Africa by giving kids shots, that's great. But we have to be a lot smarter about realizing its limitations, and that's militarily. When you call in the UN you get a bunch of guys in uniforms standing around without guns, or they can't use them unless it's to defend themselves. I don't believe in global federalism; I also don't like the idea of the U.S. as the world's policeman. But the UN is ineffective, period, at defense of any kind. So we need to look somewhere else.Olopade then relays her conversation with Rice about whom she'll be turning to for advice when she settles into her office at UN headquarters.
We chatted about Africa policy and World AIDS Day, on which both conferences took place. (Obama statement here.) I mentioned some of Brooke's comments to her, which she took in stride, with a sort of "guess who's in charge now" bemusement. Though she declined to speak on the record about UN policy, she again emphasized that she would take a radically different approach to the position, and mentioned wanting to call up former holders of the position for advice--with one notable exception: John Bolton.It's heartening to hear that Obama's ambassador the UN won't be seeking to learn how she can "lop off 10 floors of UN building in New York, [and] not make a difference." Conversely, it's equally reassuring that she will be looking to folks like former UN ambassador and seasoned diplomat Thomas Pickering, whose interview with Mark is below. (image from flickr user aussiegall under a Creative Commons license)
The spate of piracy on the Somali seas has set pundits galore a-commentin'. Before I survey the blogosphere, though, let me highlight a particularly keen -- and under-discussed -- recommendation. Professor Peter Lehr (he edited a book on piracy, so he must know what he's talking about) is adamant that fighting pirates can only ever be half the solution.
sex appeal lure of piracy as a quick-fix to disastrous economic circumstances presumably draws disparate actors into this high-profile banditry. Throw in legitimate grievances about unregulated fishing practices -- plus far too many easily available guns -- and you have a pretty straightforward explanation for the uptick in piracy.
Now, on to what some others are saying:
The other is to protect Somali waters against illegal fishing, thus giving local fishermen a fair chance to earn a living without turning to criminality. With all the focus on piracy and the "lure of easy money", it is all but forgotten that the majority of Somali fishermen do just that - try to earn a decent living against all odds, and now more and more often in the crossfire of pirates and navies.What people caught up in reporting the exploits of "the pirates" neglect to mention is that this is not a select coterie of the same criminals, over and over. While pirates certainly do strike twice (and thrice, and more), the
As I've mentioned before -- and as others have articulated in much greater depth -- ICC jurisdiction in Darfur can, if the Security Council authorizes it, be suspended for up to a year. The legal rationale cited to justify this option -- which is supported by countries like China and Russia that contend that pursuing justice through the ICC will impede efforts at peace -- is found in a section of the Rome Statute (the document that established the ICC) called Article 16. However, according to someone who helped negotiate the Rome Statute, this assumption may actually rest on shaky legal ground. Writing in Jurist, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law blog, David Scheffer, who led the U.S. delegation at the Rome Statute talks, explains that those designing the ICC ten years ago had a pretty clear idea of when Article 16 should and should not be invoked.
The original intent underpinning Article 16 was to grant the Security Council power to suspend investigation or prosecution of situations before either is launched if priorities of peace and security compelled a delay of international justice.He adds:
The negotiators' focus was on situations referred by a State Party or the Prosecutor, not by the Security Council. It would have been very odd to argue we need Article 16 as a check on Security Council referrals.The situation in Darfur, of course, was referred to the ICC by the Security Council -- on March 31, 2005, to be precise -- so calls to suspend ICC jurisdiction are most definitely not coming before the investigation was launched. This would seem to indicate that the type of scenario in Darfur today is not one for which Article 16 was intended to be used, and, indeed, Scheffer, looking back at the process of negotiation, says as much:
When Megan McArdle poses the question, "To fight or not to fight?" she hypothesizes that the answer largely rests on whether the United States opts to involve itself in a foreign intervention. Without American participation, she contends, "no one else is going to do it for us--the African Union cannot make peace in Darfur, none of Iraq's neighbors can help it if it erupts into civil war, and so forth."
To this Matthew Yglesias adds the much-needed caveat that the participation of other countries in foreign interventions can in fact add value in terms of both military effectiveness and political legitimacy. He also rightly cautions that this argument -- that American initiative is the only way to mount a serious intervention -- can dangerously provide cover for a more naked unilateralist streak.
I would add the important reminder that not all "fighting" is equal, and, more significantly, that not all interventions must amount to combat. War-fighting, counter-insurgency, and peacekeeping are, just to name a few, all very different phenomena that each operate according to very different rules and whose effectiveness require very different types of involvement. To McArdle's example that "the African Union cannot make peace in Darfur," then, the obvious answer is of course not. The peacekeeping force in Darfur is exactly that: a peacekeeping force. Peace does not come at the barrel of a gun -- least of all at the barrel of an American gun -- and the only ones that can make peace, unfortunately, are the parties at war themselves.
This does not mean that the U.S. and other countries have no role to play in such peacebuilding situations. Rather, these type of scenarios demand, if anything, more multilateral involvement, as international diplomatic pressure -- particularly from neighboring countries with a stake in stabilizing their region -- will go a lot farther in pressing for a peace accord than will American troops.
Bolton Watch: "Public officials cannot be responsible for the opinions of the people who interview them. But they can be judicious with whom they choose to grant interviews. It is therefore a wonder why Ambassador John Bolton would grant an interview to Pamela Oshry, proprietor of the anti-Muslim hate website "Atlas Shrugs."
Glenn Greenwald: "U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, on Saturday, in the middle of the most pressing crisis the U.N. has faced since he was appointed to that position, decided to sit for an hour-long, one-on-one "interview" and chose as his journalistic interrogator . . . LGF commenter Pamela "Atlas" Oshry of the blog AtlasShrugs, whose views are so far outside of what is mainstream, in equal parts inane and despicable, that it would be impossible to describe fully."
Think Progress: "'Violence against women in Afghanistan is widespread and mainly happens inside victims' homes,' according to a report from the U.N. Development Fund for Women. 'Acts of violence (against women) are happening with impunity,' the report said."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
FP Passport: "Afghan and U.N. officials fear that a persistent drought could soon add 2.4 million more people to the 6.5 million Afghans already suffering from hunger. And that development, in turn, could add to the ranks of the Taliban, magnifying the problems faced by the shaky government and the Western troops helping to hold it together."
A sampling of United Nations related blog commentary
PSD Blog covers World Refugee Day: "UNHCR, Nike, Microsoft and Right to Play chose World Refugee Day to launch ninemillion.org, a campaign "to create a global community dedicated to giving the world's refugee youth the chance to learn and play." The elegantly designed website features personal refugee stories and a 30-second public service announcement from Brazilian soccer star, and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador, Ronaldo. Nike has donated 40,000 soccer balls specially designed to endure harsh conditions at refugee camps."
Mcjoan at Daily Kos asks if Sen. Santorum trumped UN inspectors in Iraq.
Michelle Malkin repeats conservative canards about the United Nations Small Arms Review Conference.
Mojo has more on the UN, the NRA, and small arms: "the NRA tends, quite often, to stoke and inflame conservative fears that the UN really is plotting to erect some sinister world government or other that will take away all our guns."